"It's an Eels record for the whole family," assures Eels frontman E, despite the fact that his band's next effort, due June 3rd, is titled Shootenanny. "I realized that it was only a matter of time before we needed some MTV, hip, catch-phrase for shooting spree and I thought, I should be the one [to coin it] and somehow, it fits the music."

The album is the follow-up to last year's Souljacker and features songwriter/violinist Lisa Germano on several tracks. But this time around the band stepped back from the usual Pro Tools mode of recording. "We've never had one where pretty much the whole thing was recorded live," E says. "It was all recorded very quickly, in ten days."

While Souljacker featured a storybook's collection of characters, Shootenany returns to a more personal perspective. "It's the voice of someone who's coming into their own as a person," E explains. "Here's someone who's accepting things about themselves and the world. It's almost like a Sermon on the Mount." But what everyone wants to know from the Patron Saint of the Unloved is whether the album is a happy one. "I always think the albums are positive," he says, "but people take it completely the other way."

Another E project, the debut album by the reclusive sampling artist MC Honky, modestly titled I Am the Messiah, is due April 22nd. E produced the record, which is a collage of live instrumentation set to samples that range from instructions from exercise videos to a rare live vocal from bassist Koool G Murder on the inspirational "A Good Day to Be You," and E himself.

"The one thing that I love about MC Honky's stuff," E explains, "is that it's real positive, what he calls 'self-help rock.' It really made me feel good when I first started to hear the stuff that he was doing, which is no easy feat, so I thought, there's something to this."

Tentative Shootenanny track listing:

All in a Day's Work
Saturday Morning
The Good Old Days
Love of the Loveless
Dirty Girl
Agony
Rock Hard Times
Restraining Order Blues
Lone Wolf
Wrong About Bobby
Numbered Days
Fashion Awards
Somebody Loves You

CHRISTINA SARACENO
(March 13, 2003)